Elon Musk Wanted the Cybertruck to Look Like "the Future." But It Reminds Us of One Particular Past.

[marble falls]

Elon Musk Wanted the Cybertruck to Look Like “the Future.” But It Reminds Us of One Particular Past.

The story of the Casspir, which patrolled townships in South Africa when the Tesla CEO was a boy.


https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/tesla-cybertruck-protests-vandalism-elon-musk.html

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Decades later, the Tesla Cybertruck, lately a prime target for protesters demonstrating their dislike of CEO Elon Musk, blurs the boundaries between the battlefield and the public street. When Tesla released the Cybertruck in 2023, its dramatic style polarized the public. Popular theories abounded about its unusual look. Many speculated that its inspiration had come from spaceships of science fiction. In discussing the car’s aesthetic early on, Musk referenced cyberpunk and Blade Runner, a film that features sleek metallic vehicles, though with rounded silhouettes designed for aerodynamic speed. He’s also used the phrase “The future should look like the future”—a reference, his biographer Walter Isaacson said, to a question his son Saxon asked him once: “Why doesn’t the future look like the future?”

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The Cybertruck capitalizes on these fears. Its marketing, for example, explicitly taps into the current apocalyptic visions pervading both right- and left-wing political imaginaries—from climate disaster to nuclear, civil, and class warfare. Heralded as being “built for any planet,” it showcases a Bioweapon Defense Mode and a “built-in hospital grade HEPA filter” that “helps provide protection from 99.97% of airborne particles.” One third-party Tesla modification company, aimed at civilian and government clients, sells Cybertruck upgrades so it can run on jet fuel, diesel, biodiesel, and electricity.

The idea that a Cybertruck could become an artillery vehicle is not just hypothetical. Unsanctioned by Tesla, various users, ranging from a YouTuber to Chechen forces fighting for Russia in Ukraine, have modified a Cybertruck by mounting machine guns to its bed, turning it into a lightly armored weaponized machine. Government forces, such as the police in Southern California and Dubai, are using the Cybertruck as part of their fleets—although in those cases its usage is symbolic and not for patrol duties. (Irvine’s vehicle will be part of its DARE program, for example.)
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Whether or not Musk or the Cybertruck’s designers made a conscious decision to draw inspiration from the Casspir, the Cybertruck can be understood as part of this darker history of science-fictional, militarized vehicles, used in civilian life, that make a show of their own impenetrability—one captured, for example, by 12-year-old Irvin in apartheid South Africa. More broadly, these historical linkages force us to rethink and seriously question the militarization of our public spaces and culture and the attempts to normalize and monetize them. Whether through Casspirs or the Cybertruck, apartheid’s militarized, cultural, and psychological legacy roams our streets.

[Lovie777]

1. musk mindset.................

[brush]

2. What an evil-looking vehicle. No wonder the nazi-saluting fuck is such a racist bastard.

He has absolutely no aesthetic sensibilities at all (see the atrociously designed cybertruck for an example. It's his design).

[marble falls]

8. Or mechanical design skills. He Dunning-Krueger in motion. The front ends on Teslas didn't start failing ...

... until Eloon personally value re-engineered them a lot lighter and weaker.

[brush]

11. And it has stainless steel panels that rust, and some are glued on. What a hot mess.

[Cheezoholic]

12. Scrap stainless from his big rocket no less n/t

[Rachel M at 6 pm]

3. Yes but that looks like it could find its way through snow and sand

Anyone coming after you in a Cybertruck might have to get out and walk, depending on the road conditions

[marble falls]

7. The Swazticar may not go anywhere, but Musk doesn't seem to know that.

[Norrrm]

4. Other inspirations

[Ping Tung]

5. It's simple, elegant, classy, and desingned by a robot in 20 seconds as an iconic example of our austere future.

Last edited Mon Mar 17, 2025, 12:35 PM - Edit history (1)

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[NJCher]

6. Cybertrucks are the

New hummer. If you bought one, they’re an embarrassment to drive.

[Hornedfrog2000]

23. The new hummers are actually cool

Just saying

[NJCher]

28. to you, maybe

they still have an ugliness about them that communicates "mean" and "intimidating." Not OK.

[Hornedfrog2000]

32. Lol...

Oh ok. It is an electric truck that has a high range, and high towing capacity. But maybe they were meanies to someone and i never heard about it....

[NJCher]

33. The design is ugly

And it’s intended to be that way.

And don’t patronize me with your talk of meanies. I know what I am talking about because I was employed by a major Detroit automotive company. I was in marketing and I helped design the studies that we performed and which shaped the design of automobiles, vans, & trucks. I wrote the studies and supervised the market research company that carried them out. I absolutely knew that the customer I was seeking had feelings of inadequacy that would be mitigated with an intimidating design.

If you think for a second these appearances aren’t intended, you are naive.

[edhopper]

9. I thought he based it on

the cheesy Scifi movie of the 80s, Damnation Alley

[marble falls]

14. Sub-titled "In the Land of Cheap Special Effects".

[AllaN01Bear]

18. i liked that film. on my stupid best list . loved the truck.

[edhopper]

24. Carnivorous cockroaches

[AllaN01Bear]

25. indeed.

[marble falls]

26. I remember the movie but not the roaches. I really disliked the "the general" played by an old tv cowboy/police actor ..

... really, there was an actual plot?

[Kid Berwyn]

10. Unstable Moron called it, a "Tesler"

As in, “Hitler would drive a Tesler.”

Or, in Traitor’s case, “be driven in.”

[IronLionZion]

13. It looks like a garbage dumpster

that will happily get stuck in snow, mud, or dirt hills. Cybertrucks fail badly at basic truck stuff.

[marble falls]

15. I saw two photos next to each other this weekend. It is remarkable how they resemble each other ...

... of course you can get a full sheet of plywood into a dumpster with maybe eighty more sheets on top.

Obviously: a dumpster is closer to being a functional pick-up truck than is a Tesla.

[IronLionZion]

21. Is There a Functional Purpose? - Cybertruck Fails #2

[Norrrm]

30. Cybertruck is a nostalgia design.

[flvegan]

16. "Bioweapon Defense Mode"

It appears that this is simply a HEPA filter.

I'd hardly call the Wankpanzer "militarized" as it's hilarious to look at and can often be found defeated by easily passable snow.

Worst part is, at least to me, Tesla is helping to give electric vehicles a generally bad name. Unfortunately for too many folks, "Tesla" is synonymous with "electric car".

[AllaN01Bear]

17. tesla truck. hem. snork . ugly.

[yardwork]

19. Musk is a proud Nazi.

[Carlitos Brigante]

20. It should've gone something like this:

[Dave Id]

22. Cyberyuck

Muck's Cybertruck looks like a 1950's 'B' movie vehicle, ridiculous looking and not as functional as it's supposed to be. Just a prop.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

27. Musk wants to make America racist like South Africa

[Clouds Passing]

29. He stole the design from the DeLorean, but really screwed it up

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.jmU_dNirfk9iZWlbbKbyQAHaE8%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=227fc7929aca18b23b755a4411b1efdbcd04bbbebed73a6a911961bb517939c2&ipo=images

Back to the future

[Hassler]

31. There's a scrap steel yard near my house

With a giant pile of scrap visible from the road. That shit hole truck looks like it belongs on the pile.